The Materials Lab exemplifies the Triple Helix approach of the University, and helps to forge interdisciplinary connections, across departments and faculties. This brings together staff, students, practitioners, and researchers from across the University and beyond, creating an inclusive and diverse community of collaborators – focussing on teaching, practice and research excellence with purpose and vision.

It contributes to and continues Winchester School of Art’s 150-year narrative linking past, present, and future, and lead and drive some of the key conversations about how we live today, and how we negotiate the future. This is a time for profound and systemic change – a paradigm shift.

The Materials Lab is both a resource and a space to come and be curious. A place for makers and the materially-minded to explore. Hands-on research will be fostered through interdisciplinary inquiry and invention. The Lab will be dedicated to developing material literacy to expand and guide artistic practice and design work. 

The Material Lab is based in excellent education, outstanding research, and sustainable enterprise. It will seek to widen participation in all aspects of making, thus locating the Lab and WSA as a creative centre for material exploration. We see it as the place where students and researchers from all over the university would come to critically explore ontologies of materials and making.